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My paintings, inspired by cartoons and dream logic, deal with issues of aggression and anxiety, which are especially relevant given the recent economic and political climate. I feel we live in a society where aggression has become not only socially acceptable, but also a necessary trait for survival. Contemporary, capitalist, urban America has pushed competition – for jobs, housing, sex, $, parking spaces – into an intense daily struggle. It is survival of the fittest, where you are either the hunter (full of aggression) or the hunted (full of anxiety). Quite often we are filled with both, which is what these paintings explore. At the same time, a rather dry and dark humor underscores the mood of my paintings and pokes fun at the absurdity of modern life.

Music is a tremendous influence on my work as a painter. I am fascinated with the spatial, temporal, and structural components of music. I work with dense layering of paint and collage to create a network of intertwining patterns, stories, and colors which suggests movement, history, and rhythm. As structural and spatial patterns emerge, this dense layering of paint and collage is woven together into a unified composition. I see many parallels between the structural rhythm of music and that of life. My paintings are an attempt to understand and to capture the movement, the structure, the patterns, the rhythm, the history, and the interconnectedness of life.